Lighthearted thread: What was your favorite childhood toy?

I still have my teddy bear......he is over 50 years old, wears an outfit (pretty worn) knitted by my nanna (RIP). He has had eyes restitched, an arm reattached, pads remade. He is stuffed with straw and has been washed once. He also had a growler that died decades ago.

 

Any stick. It could become, with a little imagination, a gun or sword or club or bat.

Also came in handy in a fight with a neighborhood kid.

 

yeah...it was hard to beat a stick

 

There were 8 of us about the same age prowling the neighborhood. One of the boy's father worked at Remington Arms and another's work at Union Fork and Hoe. The Remington dad got a handful of rejected rifle stocks and the other dad brought home a handful of rake handles. The two dads built us some nice walnut/ash rifles! All eight of us got one to play with. The only time we didn't run around playing Army was when Jeff Maxon's big brother David got killed in Vietnam. We didn't play Army for most of that summer.:tear:

 

A Superman suit one year. A Zorro suit another year. A unicycle another year.
We would get one main present from mom and dad. Those were my favorites.

 

One year I got a play blender and toaster that really made noise and "worked." I've been cooking ever since.

We never had tinker toys, so we played with those at a friend's house every chance we could.

A friend of ours worked for a telephone company. He gave me a real phone that had been replaced with a newer one. I played with that thing a lot. Back then, we didn't have cell phones or even cordless phones (at least our family didn't) so talking on a play phone was really cool.

 

We didn't have a lot of toys so at any given age it was probably the toy I got that year for Christmas. I can remember going to boy cousin's homes and playing with Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys and train sets and at the neighbor's house playing with her big Barbie collection (she actually had a Barbie dream house!!!). Of MY toys, however, I think my all time favorite was my doll house and my Chatty Cathy.

 

Our sailboat was named Breaking Wind by its previous owner. Never got around to changing it. :laugh:

 

We would have been jealous!:thumbsup:

 

*sigh* I know. That's what Wifey said.:laugh: I just never got around to it.:laugh:

 

No more puttering...we sold Breaking Wind a few years ago, however, a few weeks ago Wifey told me that she thought I should buy another boat. Out of the blue.

I have the perfect wife.:love2:

My next (?) boat will probably have a Swedish name. Had one years ago named simply Den Bat (modified 'a', don't know how to set my keyboard to foreign script), which is simply "The Boat". Maybe name it after a fish...or Erik the Red.:smilewinkgrin:

 

Thanks.

I've not totally decided what to do yet. I do think if I get another, this one's going to be a trailer boat. No marina fees and such to mess around with. A trailer boat would have the flexibility of allowing us to roam a bit (we were confined to Lake Winnebago, WI previously). We're near to Door County (the thumb of Wisconsin that juts out into L. Mich.), and that area has held a lot of interest for us. It's become our Saturday day trip dating place.

We have a five month old golden retriever pup who's a handful right now. Though at this point I think she'd be fine, it's another consideration.

 

When I was a boy I loved model airplanes and ships, especially WWII era. Christmas was easy for me, I always got a couple of models to build.

 

I grew up in the 80's and played alot with He-Man, matchbox cars, and GI Joes. I remember one year at Easter, knowing that I would get some gifts, I prayed that my parents would buy me a GI Joe Aircraft Carrier. This would have been a big gift, probably something more than I would even expect at Christmas. Easter came and went, and of course I never got the Aircraft Carrier, and was heartbroken. Its silly now, but that was one my early times in life really praying hard for something. Just looked one up on Ebay, I'm pretty sure it was the same thing, and an original one still in the box is listed for $6,500. :tear: